How To Space Vegetables In A Raised Bed

Large Modular Metal Raised Garden Bed Kit

Our Rating

Large Modular Metal Raised Garden Bed Kit – 29” Extra Tall

View At Epic Gardening

Folding A-Frame Trellis Support For Plants

Our Rating

Folding A-Frame Trellis Support For Plants

View At Epic Gardening

3-Minute Raised Bed and Extension Kit

Our Rating

3-Minute Raised Bed and Extension Kit

View At Epic Gardening

Select Your Seeds Carefully 

To space vegetables in a raised bed, start by making a list of what you want to grow and then carefully choose cultivars that are well-suited to containers or raised beds. For example, most winter squash varieties sprawl across the ground and take up a great deal of space, making them impractical for small gardens. However, a compact option such as bush acorn squash is far more manageable.

The same idea applies to tomatoes. A determinate variety often makes more sense than an indeterminate one in tight quarters. ‘Cherry Falls‘ tomato, for instance, is a dwarf cherry tomato that reaches up to 24 inches in both height and width at maturity and still produces generously.

You also do not need to wait until plants reach full maturity before harvesting. Peas can be harvested for both their pods and tender shoots. Beets, such as the popular ‘Early Wonder’ variety, have edible leaves that taste similar to chard, and turnip greens are prized in many cuisines.

Many root and fruit crops can be grown specifically for their greens, allowing you to sow seeds much closer together than usual. By rethinking how you use your harvest, you can dramatically increase productivity in each bed.

If you want to push your raised bed garden even further, choose early-maturing cultivars when you space vegetables in a raised bed. Early varieties need fewer days to reach harvest than later ones. Butterhead lettuce can be ready in 30 to 40 days, while Bibb lettuce may take up to 70 days. Many cultivars highlight this trait in their names, including ‘Early Wonder’ beet, ‘Early Xtra’ sweet corn, ‘Early White Vienna’ kohlrabi, and ‘Early Snowball’ cauliflower.

Mound To Increase Surface Area

Small-space gardening is not just about the width and length of your raised bed. It is also about the depth of the bed and how much vertical space you can create above it. Mounding is a simple way to increase bed depth without digging deeper into the soil.

Potatoes are a classic example of a crop that benefits from mounding. As the plant grows, soil or compost is gradually piled around the stem. Potatoes form along the stem, so by mounding and covering some of the lower leaves, you create more surface area for the plant to produce tubers, increasing your overall harvest. 

Square Foot Garden Techniques

Square foot gardening is a method developed in the late 1970s by Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer and gardening hobbyist who was tired of wasting time, space, and seeds. During his engineering career, his work focused on making systems more efficient. He applied that same mindset to his home garden and began questioning many of the gardening conventions of the time. The simplicity and approachability of his plant spacing method quickly caught on, and his book became a cornerstone of modern gardening.

A typical square foot garden uses four-by-four-foot raised beds with clearly marked twelve-by-twelve-inch grids and three to four feet of space between each bed. The bed size is intentional, allowing most gardeners to comfortably reach across and care for plants without stepping into the soil.

Bartholomew emphasized the importance of clear, permanent guides every twelve inches to create a visible grid. Each square can be divided into four, nine, or sixteen smaller sections, with each smaller square holding a single plant. Through extensive experimentation with flowers and vegetables, he identified the optimal way to space vegetables in a raised bed that maximized productivity without overcrowding.

Different plants naturally have different spacing needs. A single cabbage, for example, requires an entire square foot to produce a full-sized head. Swiss chard, on the other hand, can be planted four to a square foot. His book includes practical spacing guides for common vegetables, along with a master chart showing when to direct sow, start seeds indoors, and transplant seedlings outside. It remains a favorite resource and earns a spot on many top gardening book lists.

Skip The Rows

If you have an oval or circular raised garden bed, you may want to skip rows entirely.

Some benefits of using circular or oval raised beds, such as those available through the Epic Gardening store, include accessibility from all sides and their visual appeal. When two raised beds have the same perimeter, a circular bed actually offers more growing surface area than a rectangular one.

When planting a circular or oval bed, think in terms of the perimeter and concentric rings radiating out from the center. Place the longest-maturing vegetables or perennials in the middle, then surround them with crops you plan to harvest more frequently. Mounding compost or soil in the center creates a gentle dome that increases usable growing space. You can also add a cage or trellis in the center and grow beans, peas, tomatoes, or other vining crops upward.

Another effective method to space vegetables in a raised bed for circular or oval beds is staggering plants. For example, if carrot seed packets recommend 16 inches for row spacing and two inches between plants, ignore the row spacing altogether. Use only the plant spacing and stagger carrots in a diamond pattern so each carrot sits two inches from its nearest neighbor. Repeat this staggered layout across the bed to make the most of your growing space.

Broadcast Your Leafy Greens

A common conundrum for beginning gardeners is having everything ripen at the same time. By using different sowing and harvesting techniques, you can stretch out your growing season, increase overall yields, and waste less food.

To space leafy greens such as spinach and kale, try broadcasting seeds across the growing surface instead of planting in rows. Use the cut-and-come-again method by harvesting only a few outer leaves at a time rather than removing the entire plant. This allows the plant to keep producing new leaves from the center, resulting in a much larger total harvest over time.

As a bonus, sowing a mixed greens packet gives you a variety of flavors, colors, and textures in every harvest.

Succession Planting For Success

Succession planting is another effective way to increase garden productivity when you space vegetables in a raised bed. Instead of planting all seeds or transplants at once, space plantings a few weeks apart to stagger your harvest.

For early vegetable varieties that mature quickly, such as beans or radishes, you can often fit in several plantings during the season. In some cases, it makes sense to remove older plants and replace them with fresh seedlings so everything in the bed is producing at its peak.

Setting up an indoor grow light system to start seeds and have transplants ready to go is a great way to stay ahead with succession planting. You may also want to amend the soil with additional compost between plantings to replenish nutrients and maximize yield per area.

Interplanting and multi sowing are two more techniques to boost garden production. With interplanting, earlier maturing crops are grown between long-season plants to make better use of space. For example, shallow-rooted vegetables like spinach and green onions can be planted alongside peppers or corn, which take longer to mature.

Multi-sowing involves transplanting a small cluster of seedlings together, then harvesting the largest one first to give the remaining plants room to grow. This method works especially well for vegetables like beetroot and leek.

Taking It To Greater Heights

Creating trellises is another effective way to add more growing surface area to a raised bed. An added benefit of training plants to grow vertically instead of sprawling along the ground is reduced contact with soil-borne diseases, along with improved air circulation around leaves and fruit.

Plants that are especially well-suited to trellising include tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, squash, and even melons. In my own patio space, I use this approach to create an edible green wall that also functions as a privacy fence.

I particularly enjoy growing scarlet runner beans for their vivid red flowers, which attract pollinators and hummingbirds. In this way, the vegetable garden serves multiple purposes beyond food production, and the trellis becomes an integral part of the overall landscape design.

Trellising can also be used to create a canopy that provides shade for crops growing below. For example, in an early spring garden, you might plant cold-hardy peas alongside lettuces. Many lettuces struggle with heat and will bolt in summer, but as the season progresses, peas can climb the trellis and cast shade over the lettuce, helping to extend the harvest window.

Frame Up A Longer Season

Weather plays a huge role in garden productivity. For those living in colder climates, the growing season can be extended by adding a cold frame on top of raised beds.

A cold frame can be very simple, made from plywood or PVC pipes covered with plastic sheeting to form a protective barrier over plants. The plastic traps heat from the sun, creating a warmer microclimate inside the bed and allowing cold-hardy vegetables to continue growing well past the first frost.

Pick The Right Companions

Companion planting is the practice of growing multiple plants next to each other to improve harvests, manage pests, use space more efficiently, or add aesthetic value. A classic example is planting marigolds alongside tomatoes, as marigolds help deter root-knot nematodes and other common garden pests.